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The Stories of Hip-Hop

Shannon Matesky

Shannon Matesky is an artist, activist, educator from Berkeley CA. She has been seen on stages across the country as a spoken word artist as well as featured in numerous documentaries and seen on TV on HBO’s Def Poetry Jam. Shannon’s acting credits include working with companies such as Steppenwolf Theatre Company, The Hypocrites, The Inconvenience and many others. She has taught with numerous organizations such as Youth Speaks, Young Chicago Authors, and Step-Up Women’s Network. Shannon also works on developing theatrical pieces using personal narrative included her solo show She Think She Grown. She currently resides in Chicago.

The stories of hip-hop, of rap music, are the stories of a million MCs who inside of them the words are coming, the words they need to make sense of the world around them. The words are witty and blunt, abstract and linear, sober and fucked up. And when we decode that torrent of words — by which I mean really listen to them with our minds and hearts open — we can understand their world better. And ours too. It's the same world.

This is Rhymes and Reasons.

[Paraphrased from Decoded by Jay-Z]

Rhymes and Reasons is a series of interviews with hip-hop heads who talk about their lives in the context of songs that matter to them.